Star Profile
John Whitehead of the Columbia Music Festival Association
By John Temple Ligon Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com
Steppin' on Hollywood

John Whitehead

was the show Saturday, September 8, in the Township Auditorium.

The show was put on by the Columbia Music Festival Association and its partner SCARF + SCREEN COLUMBIA, "Steppin'" was a red carpet evening of dining, dancing, cocktails, and cinematic inspired performances celebrating Columbia's own Stanley Donen, the film director

best known for Singin' in

the Rain.

Overseeing everything was John Whitehead, executive director of CMFA since 1982. The CMFA began in 1897, and its first headquarters was in the opera house at the corner of Main and Gervais.

Whitehead was born in New York City, where his father was a banker while his mother ran the house. The family home was called Sutton House, situated on Beekman Place in NYC's Upper East Side.

At age seven, Whitehead was sent to Canada for Catholic boarding school. When he turned 13, he entered a junior seminary in McCutcheon, N.J., run by the St. Joseph's House of Studies. The criteria for graduation included the N.Y. Regents' Exams, the N.J. Exit Exams, and Canada's Lycee Placement Exams.

Whitehead began his full seminary program in Mobile, Ala., at Spring Hill College, which called itself "The Jesuit College of the South." But Whitehead decided not to pursue the priesthood. The U.S. Army drafted him in 1965, putting him in basic training at Ft. Gordon, Ga., near Augusta.

Following basic training, Whitehead was transferred to Ft. Jackson, which became his introduction to Columbia. After further training at Ft. Jackson, he was assigned as an administrative assistant to a training brigade commander.

While assigned to the permanent party at Ft. Jackson, Whitehead lived on Terrace Way in Shandon. In his non- duty, off- base time he volunteered to help with the CMFA. Their offices were in the Horry- Guignard House on Senate Street next to Dr. Craft and the Columbia Museum of Art in the Taylor mansion. Among other duties, he was an usher at plays and concerts, and he worked just about any area of stage production. Ann Brodie's Columbia City Ballet was just getting under way, and it was the first year for Workshop Theater.

In 1967, after two years in the Army, Whitehead traveled throughout Europe and returned to NYC. He graduated from USC and stayed for graduate school for a MAT, finishing in 1972. One of his favorite courses was film history by Columbia's Bernie Dunlap, now president at Wofford College.

After graduate school, Whitehead went to work for the CMFA fulltime while Leon Harrelson was the executive director.

At the time, USC was debating where to locate what became the Koger Center. The State Museum was looking for a home and the money to build it. The city was trying to fully understand the Doxiadis Report, the town plan for the future of Columbia put forth by a world- class urban planner.

In 1982, Columbia Mayor Kirkman Finlay announced his intentions with the new Cultural Council, consolidating arts funding and taking the responsibility and headaches away from the CMFA. About the same time, Whitehead became executive director.

Whitehead and Ann Brodie worked with a small group in 1988 to form the Carolina Ballet, a community- based civic company open to amateur dancers, pre- professionals who wanted the performance opportunities.

Whitehead's CMFA headquarters office is at 914 Pulaski, a 20,000- sq. ft. former warehouse used as performance and rehearsal space by people from all over and by 12,500 locals in the past year.

Whitehead runs the CMFA building as a community resource with no charges to non- profit groups. Next year is the last year of a 15- year mortgage on the building, and Whitehead expects to launch a capital campaign in 2010 to fund further renovations.